LAPD Testing Knife Found at O.J. Simpson’s House as Possible Murder Weapon

Members of the Los Angeles Police Department's Robbery-Homicide Division are testing a knife that was allegedly discovered at the house formerly owned by O.J. SImpson, offering the tantalizing possibility that it could be the long-missing weapon used in the notorious 1994 murders of Simpson's ex-wife Nicole Brown and Ronald Goldman.

According to a law-enforcement source who spoke to The Los Angeles Times, "The knife was apparently turned over to a police officer a number of years ago by a person doing construction work at the property."

Many people involved in the legal prosecution of Simpson have said that the failure by investigators to produce the murder weapon at trial made it much harder to achieve a guilty verdict. The missing knife had become an obsession for detectives working on the case, and over the years numerous possible weapons were discovered but all were eventually ruled out.

Details are still short, as LAPD Captain Andrew Neiman told reporters at a Friday news conference. Police are reluctant at this point to put too much faith into this being the giant piece of the puzzle. "[The] whole story is possibly bogus from the get-go,” Neiman said.

Simpson's Brentwood home was destroyed in 1998, so if this knife was actually found there, it may have been hidden for quite a long time, adding to potential difficulties for forensic investigators. The name of the construction worker who may have given the weapon to a police officer years ago was not released, nor is it clear whether the police even know it at all.